Letters: Pentagon, U.S. debt, oil, civic haiku

Pentagon budget

In response to “Pentagon unveils budget cuts” (Jan. 27): Rep. Duncan Hunter warns that the Pentagon’s proposed budget cuts would bring the whole military “close to its tipping point,” in danger of becoming a “hollow force.”

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Right now we spend more money on our military than all the other major industrial nations combined. China, for example, with the next largest military budget, spends approximately one-tenth as much as we do. We Americans have amassed enough planes, tanks, bombs, guns, ships and military to kill every man, woman and child on the planet at least 20 times. If the military budget is indeed cut as proposed, we will only be able to kill everyone on earth, say, 19 times.

The strategy dates from the post-Cold War “bottom-up review” when Defense Secretary Les Aspin elected to preserve existing force structures instead of conducting the robust rethink we needed. The cost has been enormous; when we were attacked on 9/11 we had wasted billions sustaining the wrong force structures.

Panetta’s idea of fighting in one theater while “spoiling” a secondary adversary is what we did at the start of World War II, initially relying on naval and air power to manage the Pacific. But this requires modernized forces supported by long-reach capabilities like satellites to see the global battlefield and drones, bombers and fifth-generation aircraft to keep hot spots under control as we mobilize.

That’s why advocating a status quo military is as senseless as the across-the board “supercommittee” meat ax cuts pending in Congress. By resetting our strategy and shrinking the active forces, we will find the savings to sustain our special-ops capabilities, maintain a ready reserve and rebuild our air and naval forces for the mission ahead. – Ronald Fogleman, General, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Durango, Colo.

Few debt solutions – and president no help

Regarding President Obama’s State of the Union address, I would like to say that I am worried for this nation’s future. Obama briefly addressed our country’s ever-growing deficit, but he only reinforced his stance on how the rich must pay their due (“Obama warns unfairness threatens middle class,” Jan. 25). He refused to acknowledge any other solutions for our nation’s debt, as well as how great a problem our debt truly is.

I feel as if I am in a sinking ship, and as water pours in on us at all sides, the ones responsible for getting rid of the water only argue about which part of the boat they should work on first. If they manage to come to an agreement, they only lift a single bucket of water out of the onslaught of liquid and then go right back to arguing.

The fact that our own president is incapable of understanding that we have to band together and that everyone has to compromise for this problem to be solved, and that simply making the rich pay 30 percent of their income in taxes isn’t going to be a fix all, is disturbing to me.